Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Operation which traced 250,000 paedophiles worldwide last year

Fifty police officers across the UK have been arrested as part of a crackdown on suspected paedophiles who pay to access child pornography websites, detectives revealed today.

The officers were among 1,300 people arrested on suspicion of accessing or downloading indecent images of children - some as young as five - from US-based Internet sites.

Thirty-five men were arrested in London this morning as part of the investigation - codenamed Operation Ore - following raids on 45 addresses across the capital....

Mr Gamble said the 50 officers were among 1,200 Britons who had been identified as "category one or two" suspects - those who posed the greatest potential risk to children.

In addition, 40 children nationwide - 28 of them in London - had been identified as being at risk of being abused and appropriate steps had been taken with other agencies to ensure that all the youngsters were safe.

Before today's arrests, the Metropolitan Police had executed 75 warrants across the capital with 65 arrests and more than 130 computers seized. Although 7,000 suspected users of "pay-per-view" child pornography sites based in the US were identified in Britain, Mr Gamble said the actual number of offenders would probably be lower, partly due to duplicates....

"Behind these indecent, abusive images are real children who will have suffered immense damage and trauma."

Operation Ore is the UK wing of a huge FBI operation which traced 250,000 paedophiles worldwide last year through credit card details used to pay for downloading child porn.

The names of British suspects were passed on by US investigators.

Suspects were traced through the Landslide web site - a gateway to an international collection of child pornography sites.